Ruthopheax is quite an elusive figure for the historian to pin down.
Above all he was a master of projecting himself to the world at large
exactly as he wanted to appear. He manufactured his own image, and
Atlanteans of the Third Empire and afterwards believed this image was
the real man. Much remains hidden about what actually went on in the
630s and 640s, and Ruthopheax was happy that it should be so. However we
know now, and some Atlanteans of the Fourth Empire and later (i.e. after
790) came to learn, that there was another, far darker side to
Ruthopheax as politician and Emperor. The extracts from Atlantean
historians given below will show the differences between the two images,
as well as describe the atmosphere of the period around 629, when the
Imperialists finally overthrew the last Republicans.

The first passage was written by Ruthopheax's official chronicler in
the later 630s, and was later included in the standard lives of the
Emperor. It paints a heroic and unblemished picture of the Emperor, who
appears far-sighted and detached, and glosses over the actions he took
against the defeated Republicans.

Louron thus managed to be the first
commander to reach the outskirts of the great city of Atlantis itself.
High walls surrounded the town, manned by the last forces left to the
Republican usurpers. Louron had no doubts about how to deal with this
seeming obstacle, and, as he had done so often before, lined up all his
artillery. In a matter of only two days, a great breach had been blown
in the wall, and he was able to launch his soldiers through it on the
third day. Thus he gained entrance inside the city walls, but his army
still had a hard fight ahead of it, to force its way down to the sea and
the centre of the city.

The enemy did indeed resist furiously at first, and at this point the
Army came up again against the devilish inventions of the Republican
inventor, Bueccan. This inventor of steam-powered engines misguidedly
gave his services to the Republicans, and from his home town of Tilrase
had overseen the construction of many such engines, which could carry
soldiers and arms rapidly and securely about the battlefield and against
our soldiers. These had caused some dismay and casualties at first, but
our fearless men soon got used to them and learned how to deal with
them. Now in Atlantis the remaining engines were thrown against us,
commanded again by Bueccan, who had fled to Atlantis when our Army took
Tilrase. But the engines all either broke down or roamed aimlessly
around until our men were able to shoot their drivers. Bueccan himself
was captured, and Louron decided that it would be best to set an example
and ordered his execution - and also of other Republicans who were
believed to have driven these machines.

(This passage was
omitted from histories published after 650, as Ruthopheax wanted to
erase the knowledge of such inventions from everyone's memory.)Louron
quite rightly believed these machines, and all such inventions, to be
devilish and unsuitable for the Empire he was to found a year or so
later.

In due course our soldiers defeated the enemy, and approached the
centre of the city. Unfortunately the delay had given the Republican
leaders time to prepare their escape, and they, abandoning their army
and citizens, crept away on to boats and off to the "Atlano Mandeng´o"

At that time, Louron himself, riding his horse, went up the hill
inside the walls, on which the first city temple had been built back in
the reign of the unfortunate Emperor Carel III. Here too had been the
great statue to Atlaniphon II, put up by Emperor Atlanicerex. The temple
was a ruin, and the statue had vanished, having been destroyed by the
Republicans. Our leader, his cloak billowing behind him, sat motionless
on his horse on top of the hill, silhouetted against the horizon by the
setting sun. He gazed around him, looking mournfully at the temple
ruins, and then at the city which lay at his feet, and finally at the
ships fleeing across the waters, carrying the cowardly Republican
leaders. He beckoned to two of his staff to join him, and spoke to them,
as I have been informed:

"This is truly the greatest day of my life. Within a few hours,
or a day at most, the city of Atlantis will be ours, and the hateful
blight of Republicanism will be eradicated from the Empire. I am humbled
by the honour that General Treckol has granted me to be able to capture
this last refuge of the enemy. I want to help him to rebuild our Empire
under its old values. But above all we must purge and cleanse places
like this of all the taints of that pernicious Republicanism, which they
have adopted for the past 40 years."

As Louron prophesied, the last enemy soldiers surrendered within a
day or two. Due to the treachery of the navy, we were unable to
intercept the Republican leaders, who escaped finally to Yc´el
Atlantis. Louron later found out those Republican leaders who had
remained in hiding in Atlantis, put them on trial and saw that they
received suitable sentences. After that, he left the city, and went to
join his commander, General Treckol in the rear.

The second extract was written in secret and never published. It was
found as a manuscript by an historian around 785, and later similar
narratives were uncovered. These seem to show that Louron, even before
he was Emperor, and also throughout the 630s and 640s, acted with
extreme brutality and cruelty towards anyone who was a Republican, or
who even had the misfortune to have lived in a Republican city before
628.

Louron was furious that the Republican
leaders had mostly escaped his vengeance in Atlantis by fleeing away
across the seas. He cursed the navy for its treachery, then, even before
the fighting in the city had finished, ordered every person remaining
who had had any sort of authority under the old regime to be dragged
forth and made ready to stand trial.

It proved difficult to find these people, and more difficult to
ascertain who had been active in the former government, and who were
just ordinary citizens. Louron, though, was growing ever more angry as
he toured the ancient city and saw the deprivations which the
Republicans had carried out there - the Imperial Palace partly
destroyed, and partly turned into an arsenal, nearly all the statues of
Emperors destroyed, the temples turned into offices, the nobles' houses
given to ordinary citizens, etc. He showed these things to his army,
deliberately to build up its hatred against the Republicans.

He ordered the leaders to be executed forthwith, now, without any
trial, and in public, in the same place and same way as the Republicans
had in the past executed our leaders, above all Emperor Crehonerex. They
were not just beheaded, though, but savagely beaten and burned to death
tied to stakes. Others were also executed, many just ordinary soldiers,
who happened to have been taken prisoner.

Then Louron announced that he intended to purge this city by evicting
up to a quarter of its inhabitants. This he did, forcing them out into
the countryside, scattering them about, and leaving them to make their
own shelters. When General Treckol heard about this, he was angered, and
ordered Louron to stop any further reprisals. Louron reluctantly obeyed
for the time, but after the assassination of Treckol, which some claimed
Louron himself was behind, he resumed all these activities again. Indeed
matters grew much worse for the inhabitants of the towns of the old
Republic, for Louron now inflicted on all the large towns in this area,
the same punishments he had already carried out on Atlantis city. One of
his favourite sayings was: "Cities are the source of all evils. Good
comes only from the country, whose representative in the Squire."
Worse still - he established a secret army within an army, and whenever
he evicted citizens from these towns, which he did from at intervals
over and over again, rather than just settling them elsewhere in the
countryside, thousands were taken off and secretly killed...